


The Sun On Your Face (I'm Freezing That Frame)

by irisbleufic



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/M, Female Character of Color, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Idiots in Love, Injury Recovery, Jaeger Pilots, Jewish Character, Kicking Kaiju Ass, LGBTQ Jewish Character(s), M/M, Multi, Post-Canon, Post-Movie(s), Science Boyfriends, Science Husbands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 06:20:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2841149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irisbleufic/pseuds/irisbleufic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"Hate to break it to you," Newton whispers, kissing Hermann's neck with a happy sigh before letting his head drop to rest against Hermann's shoulder, "but we're busted in five, four, </i>three<i>—"</i></p><p><i>"Your ass is</i> mine<i>, Geiszler!" shouts Officer Hak, barging into the lab. "You too, Doctor Gottlieb. If you think you can get off so easy—"</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sun On Your Face (I'm Freezing That Frame)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hermannco](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=hermannco).



> My _Pacific Rim_ Secret Santa recipient, [**hermannco**](http://hermannco.tumblr.com/), left me with one of the most unusual, yet evocative prompts I've ever been assigned— _Presents! Blue! Sunshine!_ They also stated that Newt/Hermann and Sasha/Aleksis are their favorite pairings, so this was essentially an excuse for me to do something resembling an everyone-lives AU. Sasha/Aleksis is my other favorite ship (alongside Tendo/Alison), so thanks for giving me the chance to write about two of my top three pairings! The first scene of this is, in part, a parallel-universe variant on something I've written [**elsewhere**](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2211507); no previous knowledge of the other piece is necessary. Title yanked from "Gold Dust," by Tori Amos. I wanted to showcase Hermann-Sasha friendship in this. Happy Holidays!

They kiss as soon as they're alone, because they've been working up to it all night. _Embrace by embrace_ , Hermann thinks, _an inevitability_ , and swallows the startled sound Newton makes into Hermann's mouth as he drops the items he'd just shed, filthy tie and broken glasses, on the desk.

They've got precious little time until someone comes looking, until Tendo comes to drag them back to LOCCENT or Marshall Hansen sends someone to haul their arses in for medical evaluation, so Hermann wraps both arms around Newton's waist and backs him into sitting on the edge of the desk. Newton sighs the second time their lips meet, squirming against Hermann to get comfortable.

"You didn't really suggest we come down here so I could drop off my shit," Newton says, rubbing the back of Hermann's neck, nuzzling Hermann's cheek like he's been starved for this. "You just wanted someplace you could, oh, what's that word, _snog_ me without an audience, am I right?"

Hermann leans in for a third kiss, and Newton doesn't even protest. Even exhausted, hungry, shaking, and in pain, this feels like the correct remedy for what ails them. He wants a shower, a bed, and then sleep; he wants Newton warm and drowsy beside him in the morning, wants to kiss and stroke and suck him until he _screams_. "Yes," Hermann pants. "That was _quite_ the point."

Newton taps the side of his nose and grins, tilting his head so he can nip at Hermann's earlobe. "I'd be so, _so_ on-board with us fucking, like, right-here-right- _now_ , but I hurt in places I haven't thought about in years, and also I think we'd die of trace K-Blue contamination given what we've been mucking around in, do you follow? I know it was fortuitous, but that toilet was _not_ sexy, dude."

"Then come back to my room," mutters Hermann, peevishly, "and we can sort this travesty out."

"Hate to break it to you," Newton whispers, kissing Hermann's neck with a happy sigh before letting his head drop to rest against Hermann's shoulder, "but we're busted in five, four, _three_ —"

"Your ass is _mine_ , Geiszler!" shouts Officer Hak, barging into the lab. "You too, Doctor Gottlieb. If you think you can get off so easy—" She stops short, blinking at Hermann as rapidly as he's blinking at her; how Hermann has failed to detect her approach, he doesn't know. " _Wow_. I admire your desire to make the Rangers jealous, but I've already got their butts hooked up to monitors."

Newton wipes his mouth on Hermann's blazer and disentangles himself from Hermann's embrace, hopping down off the desk. "Can I plead innocence on the grounds that this wasn't my idea?"

"Sure, I _believe_ you," says Ada, imposing in her PPDC-issue scrubs, winking at Hermann, "but that doesn't mean shit. You guys are coming with me right now. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner you can get on with your post-drift victory fuck, or whatever it is that I just interrupted."

While Newton frets over his shirt-buttons, Hermann straightens his clothing and asks her, "How do you know that particular detail, exactly? Has the Marshall made so free with intel—"

"Dude, shut up," Newton sighs, fetching Hermann's cane off the floor and handing it to him so he doesn't have to keep propping himself on the desk. "We barged in there finishing each other's freaking _sentences_ ; I think it's pretty goddamn obvious how we got the information. Right?"

"See?" Ada says to Hermann. "He's not an idiot as often as you think. Now, guys. _Move_."

Industrial-grade showers, the donning of undignified patient-garb, and a full battery of diagnostics takes almost two hours. Somehow finished ahead of Newton, Hermann spends around thirty minutes tossing and turning on his scratchy-sheeted cot until Officer Hak finally steers Newton, looking dramatically pathetic in a standard-issue ER wheelchair, behind the partition and points to the cot opposite Hermann's. The two beds have only a wheelie supplies-caddy and a chair placed between them. Hermann sits up as Ada helps Newton to his feet.

"Nothing a couple weeks' rest, a wrist brace, and lots of painkillers can't fix," she says, getting Newton situated on the edge of his mattress. "As for the broken ribs, there's no cast in the world I can put on _those_ , my friend." She lowers her voice as Newton gives her the finger. "Just keep the sexy times tame for the first few weeks, got it? Doctor Gottlieb, he's all yours. Be gentle."

"I shall keep that in mind," Hermann sighs, pointedly lying back down. "Thank you, Ada."

Hermann listens while Newton, kicking down his covers with a grunt, finally lies back. "Clean bills of health, I guess?" he ventures softly. "Unless they found something wrong with you? Hermann?"

"I'm fine," Hermann replies, opening his eyes to blink at the vaulted ceiling. "Please, _please_ rest."

There's heavy silence for a while, during which time Hermann, believing Newton has taken the hint, drifts off to sleep. Rustling and a sharp intake of breath tug Hermann back from the brink; his first panicked thought is that Newton must be in terrible pain, so he sits up without thinking.

" _Shit_ ," Newton gasps, the word little more than breath, stilling his hand beneath his gown.

Hermann can't respond, overcome with guilt at having so recklessly wound them up earlier. He's beyond the pale, his body too worn-out to respond, but Newton is trembling and trying to hide the damp spot he's leaked into his gown and it won't _do_. Hermann rises, bracing himself on the caddy, and fishes in several of the plastic drawers until he comes up with a packet of surgical lubricant.

"Fuck," Newton whispers, struggling to prop himself up on his elbows. "What are you _doing_?"

Hermann sticks the packet between his teeth and shifts his grip over to the chair, shoving and dragging until he's got it situated parallel with Newton's cot. He drops into it, settling wearily, and opens his mouth to let the packet drop into his lap. Newton is still up on his elbows, regarding Hermann with a stunned mixture of arousal and disbelief. Hermann leans to kiss him, ease him back against the insufficient pillow, and Newton complies. He skims Newton's exposed inner thigh with his fingertips, splaying his hand gently as he slides the hem of Newton's gown up to his hip.

"Following orders," Hermann murmurs, startling at Newton's helpless moan as he takes Newton's cock in his hand. " _Shhh_. We mustn't attract attention." Newton shivers, so Hermann squeezes gently, working his thumb over Newton's slit. He rips the packet using his free hand and his teeth. "Ada will turn a blind eye," Hermann whispers, slicking Newton's cock, and Newton _groans_.

"Hermann, this is _not_ on the list of fantasies I had for our first time—"

"Do you want me to stop?" asks Hermann, wryly, slowing his strokes.

"—but I'll fucking _take_ it," Newton continues with a breathless giggle.

Hermann's cheeks burn with this, with wanting to let Newton whimper and cry freely while he's being touched, but, after the events of earlier, the medical bay is full to overflowing. Rangers Mori and Becket are closest, behind partitions a matter of mere _yards_ away, but both are audibly snoring. He tosses the packet at the bin next to the caddy, misses, and turns his attention instead on the precious, pulsing heat in his hand and the way Newton's mouth falls open as he comes.

"Can I," Newton pants, scrabbling for Hermann's wrists while Hermann cleans him up with a handful of tissues from the caddy, "Hermann, God, _please_ would you just fucking _stop_ that and—"

Hermann tosses the tissues at the bin, this time hitting his mark. He takes Newton's right hand, kisses it, and presses it over his heart. He guides it slowly down to his belly, relishing the way Newton's fingernails scrabble at the thin fabric of his gown, and then spreads his legs in response to Newton's sleepy, uncoordinated palming. "How I wish I _could_ ," he whispers. "Not tonight."

"Then get your ass in bed with me," Newton replies. "I'll take a rain-check as long as you stay."

 _I love you too dearly for words_ , Hermann thinks, complying; he's asleep before he can say so.

  


*

  


Hermann wakes to find Officer Hak, ever vigilant, seated in the chair next to Newton's cot.

"Hey, stranger," says Ada, in a loud whisper. "Check out Sleeping Beauty here. He snores."

"Quietly enough," Hermann replies, levering himself into a sitting position. "What's the time?"

Ada checks her watch, fiddling with the settings. "With the exception of getting up once to use the loo and then sneak back to your own bed, you've been out for twelve hours. Doctor Geiszler's been out for that long and _counting_. Just how did you get him to sleep, anyway?"

Hermann glances guiltily at the bin, but Ada doesn't seem to notice. "Ways and means."

"You must be wondering what the damages are," she says quietly. "To the rest of the team."

"I'd hoped to delay that question," Hermann sighs, closing his eyes, "but there's little point."

"Those Wei kids are troopers," Ada tells him. "They're in critical condition at Queen Mary, but stable. They were more than we could handle down here. Banged-up and drivesuit-burnt, a regular mess of serious fractures between them. Hu cut it especially close. Bloody near drowned."

Hermann opens his eyes, staring at her in disbelief. "Then if _they've_ pulled through, surely . . . "

"Your comrades are on the crit-wing right here in the dome," Ada says. "And that's the _good_ news."

"Do I even want to hear the bad?" Hermann asks, swinging his legs over the side of the cot. Remembering something he'd spotted when he'd gone rummaging, Hermann leans forward and drags open the lower drawer of the caddy. He sticks one of the spare gowns on like a robe, the better to cover the ties in the back of the one he has on, and ties it up in the front. " _Well_?"

"Aleksis flat-lined," Ada says, "but we got him. Just barely. Where do you think you're going?"

Hermann snags his cane from where he'd propped it along the foot-rail of his cot. Setting it aside on the coverlet, he grudgingly puts on the terrible footie-things he'd been issued the night before.

"Where do you _think_ I'm going?" he asks, getting to his feet. "Now, will you take me or not?"

Ada guides him through the network of sterile, fluorescent-lit halls and, at length, leaves him next to a half-open door. "They might both be asleep," she whispered. "Don't go in if they are."

Thanking her with a wordless nod, Hermann turns, pushing his way cautiously into the room.

Sasha is not in her bed. She's towed her IV-line over next to Aleksis's bed, and she's sitting, neck-braced and awake, with her elbows propped on the side-rail. She slowly turns her head.

"Some job those stupid brutes have done, eh?" Sasha rasps, cracking a dry-lipped smile.

"No doubt they've done a number on us all," Hermann agrees, setting a hand on her arm.

"If _this_ stupid brute does not pull through," Sasha sighs, reaching through the rail to pat Aleksis's sheet-covered thigh, "there will be hell to pay. I will find him in the afterlife and kill him _again_."

"Hush," Hermann murmurs, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot before using Sasha's shoulder for additional support. "Dear girl, he's been there and back. The aether didn't want him."

"Does that tall, yet weirdly cute dyke tell you everything?" Sasha quips. "Nurse Hak is thankfully _not_ so much a hack. I should say, she is not a hack at all. She saved him. I thank God for it."

"I thank anyone who happened to be listening," Hermann agrees. "She didn't mention _that_."

"The other idiots helped," Sasha concedes, reaching to brush a bit of dried saliva from the corner of Aleksis's slack mouth, "and that quiet doctor who is her partner, I think, is maybe even competent."

"Jung-Won is exactly as you describe zir," Hermann replies. "Competent to a fault, so it seems."

"I would ask you to pull up a chair, but neither one of us is in shape to do pulling," says Sasha, blackly, and shifts her hand from Aleksis's arm over to rest on Hermann's hand at her shoulder.

"Agreed," Hermann sighs. "I ought to get back, lest Newton should wake in my absence."

"I need a very long holiday," says Sasha, with a bitter laugh. "What do you think? Siberia ought to be peaceful. A fucking ice-box, but peaceful. What would your loud boyfriend say to that?"

"He might complain about having to drag out his duck-down coat, for one," Hermann says.

Sasha raises her eyebrows at him, eyes softening in wonder. "Ah, Hermann. At _last_ —?"

"At _very_ long last, yes," Hermann replies, grinning at her. "We've made a start, at least."

"Then this trip will be your honeymoon," Sasha says. "Lake Baikal in the spring! Nothing but sunshine and azure skies, like a fucking fairytale. We will give you many engagement gifts."

"I don't think the PPDC will let us off the hook that lightly," Hermann cautions. "Dues to pay."

" _Da_ , drinking like rock stars after press-talks in every city on the planet," replies Sasha, grinning in spite of herself; Aleksis twitches in his sleep, reflexively clutching Sasha's free hand. "Count me in."

 


End file.
